Booker Taliaferro Washington

Booker Taliaferro Washington

A former slave, Washington had very few opportunities to better his position in society. After the Civil War, Washington and his mother moved to Malden, West Virginia, where she married freedman Washington Ferguson. The family was very poor, and 9-year-old Washington went to work in the nearby salt furnaces with his stepfather instead of going to school. In his autobiography, and as Ernest L. Gibson III describes in the Envy of Erudition, Washington described his work in the salt furnaces as necessary for his family's economic sustainability: "Thus, early on Washington viewed 'hard' industrial work as an insatiable Minotaur that devoured the optimistic futures of the young, naive, and unfortunate It is not till later in life that this view of backbreaking labor changes.'" Later on, Washington's mother noticed his interest in learning and got him a book from which he learned the alphabet and how to read and write basic words. Washington first discovered his desire to pursue education when he saw a little boy reading and he was fascinated by the boy’s ability to read a book. In Up from Slavery page 7, he describes his early slave life and how slavery was a hell that he would need to leave and education was his way out: "The picture of several dozen boys and girls in a schoolroom engaged in study made a deep impression upon me, and 1 had the feeling that to get into a school house and study in this way would be about the same as getting into paradise." At about this time, Booker took the first name of his stepfather as his last name, Washington so that he could be accepted by his fellow schoolmates as they all had additional surnames. This was very important since without the additional surname he would have been recognized by the whites as another freed slave. This way, he could at least be granted a small respect by some of the whites – being "worthy". As an evidence for this argument, Washington in Up from Slavery, page 35, talks about naming himself and ponders on values which would be granted with the privilege of having multiple names that would track his ancestry: "…I have sometimes had the feeling that if I had inherited these, and had been a member of a more popular race."

In 1866, Booker T. Washington got a job as a houseboy for Viola Ruffner, the wife of coal mine owner Lewis Ruffner. Mrs. Ruffner was known for being very strict with her servants, especially boys. Washington thought that she saw something in him—his maturity, intelligence and integrity—and soon warmed up to him. Over the two years he worked for her, she understood his desire for an education and allowed him to go to school for an hour a day during the winter months. In Up from Slavery, page 44, he gives her the credit of great service she had done for him: "I here repeat what I have said more than once before, that the lessons that I learned in the home of Mrs. Ruffner were as valuable to me as any education I have ever gotten anywhere since" Mrs. Ruffner had an important influence on Washington. As paraphrased from Envy of Erudition, he was introduced to a new form of education, different from the basic literacy acquired in his early childhood. Then the author continues with an addition: "For instance, his admission to Hampton can indirectly be connected to the type of work he did for Mrs. Ruffner."

In 1872, Booker T. Washington left home for Virginia seeking to further his education. Along the way he took odd jobs to support himself. He convinced administrators to let him attend the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Virginia and took a jobs as a janitor to help pay his tuition. Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute in Virginia, founded in 1868 by Samuel C. Armstrong: "Washington indirectly noted the hell that was Maiden in writing, 'It seemed to me that it [Hampton] must be the greatest place on earth, and not even Heaven presented more attractions for me at that time than did Hampton'" (Clash of the Titans) It was there that Washington became fond of particularized program of industrial education, which later on reflects his whole ideology. He was deeply influenced by Armstrong. In the Up from Slavery, Washington is describing Armstrong as the finest man he has ever met Armstrong had been a commander of a Union African-American regiment during the Civil War and was a strong supporter of providing newly freed slaves with a practical education. Armstrong became Washington's mentor, strengthening his values of hard work and strong moral character.

Booker T. Washington graduated from Hampton in 1875 with high marks. For a time, he taught at his old grade school in Malden, Virginia, and attended Wayland Seminary in Washington, D.C. In 1879, he was chosen to speak at Hampton's graduation ceremonies, where afterward General Armstrong offered Washington a job; teaching. In 1881, the Alabama legislature approved $2,000 for a "colored" school, the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute (now known as Tuskegee University). General Armstrong was asked to recommend a white man to run the school, but instead recommended Booker T. Washington. Washington describes this on page 107 in Up from Slavery as the great achievement of his life, because despite administration wanting Armstrong to recommend a white man, Armstrong, a white man himself, choose an African-American man, which again goes hand in hand with Washington’s determination about his ideology "Accordingly, he wrote to the people who had applied to him for the information, that he did not know of any white man to suggest, but if they would be willing to take a colored man, he had one whom he could recommend. In this letter he gave them my name" Classes were first held in an old church, while Washington travelled all over the countryside promoting the school and raising money. "He reassured whites," states Biographycom, "that nothing in the Tuskegee program would threaten white supremacy or pose any economic competition to whites, because majority of them would most likely not agree to support this instate with knowing that it would strive for political rights – attack white supremacy. "

Under Booker T. Washington's leadership, as the article by Harlan, Louis R. on Booker T. Washington states, Tuskegee became a leading school in the country, built from scratch only by students and teachers just from their contributions. At his death, it had more than 100 well-equipped buildings, 1,500 students, a 200-member faculty teaching 38 trades and professions, and a nearly $2 million endowment, which highlights his slow progress with great results. During Washington's rise as a national spokesperson for African-Americans, they were systematically excluded from the vote and political participation through African-American codes and Jim Crow laws as rigid patterns of segregation and discrimination became institutionalized throughout the South and much of the country. Washington put much of himself into the school's curriculum, stressing the virtues of patience, enterprise, and thrift. He taught that economic success for African-Americans would take time, and that subordination to whites was a necessary evil until African-Americans could prove they were worthy of full economic and political rights.